1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to a method, system, and computer program product for an improved client-server file-system. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method, system, and computer program product for client to client resource sharing in a client-server file-system.
2. Description of the Related Art
A client-server file-system is a distributed file-system. In a client-server file-system, a client establishes a connection with a file-server to utilize the file-system resources and data available from the file-server. An existing distributed file-system protocol (file-system protocol) allows any number of clients to establish connections with the file-server and utilize the resources and data available from the file-server.
A file-server's resources include data files as well as synthetic files. A synthetic file is a file representation of a resource, such as a keyboard, a display device, a memory, an audio device, or other similar device or resource available at the file-server, and data related thereto. A synthetic file is also called a resource file. A data file is a collection of data organized according to a file structure. Some examples of data files are spreadsheets, text documents, source code files, binary files, and images.
A client can request a data file or a resource file from a file-server using the request response messages specified in the file-system protocol in use. For example, to use a resource of the file-server, a client can send a request to mount the file-server's resource at the client. The file-server can respond with a response message granting access to the file-server's resource.